Does God Exist?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

I never wanted to write directly about God. What can be said about what Catholicism calls “ineffable,” a term for that which cannot be fully described or explained. Some years ago, I did write an essay about the existence of God. I relied heavily on the “proofs” for God’s existence put forth by St. Thomas Aquinas and the tradition of scholastic philosophy. I sent the essay to a professor at our local seminary in Philadelphia for his review. He wrote back that the main problem he had with my essay was that it presumed God exists. That critique certainly caused me to pause, especially since it came from a seminary professor. I thought I was on safe ground saying that God exists—isn’t that where the creed begins? I asked him to explain, and he responded, “If cows and trees exist, then God does not exist.” Again, I was baffled; but I started to understand his premise. 

The two key words “God” and “exist” are challenging concepts that can too easily be misunderstood. Cows and trees exist as beings distinct from other beings; Aquinas himself said that it is more accurate to say that God is “being itself” rather than a being that exists alongside other beings. Catholicism asserts that God is mystery, beyond our comprehension; but it also proclaims that God exists, despite the shortcomings of the words. Any God-talk must accept that God is always beyond any description we might make. However, such humility and hesitancy about seeking to define God is not to diminish God. God is “more than,” not “less than.” All religions grapple with how to speak about that which does not fit neatly into our ordinary ways of comprehending. The Hindu phrase neti, neti (“not this, not that”) about ultimate mystery is not meant to dismiss the concept God but to caution that our understanding of the ultimate is always incomplete. The Hebrew word for God is equally cautionary but affirming: YHWH, “I am who I am.”
Where does that leave Christians and others who proclaim belief in God? As only a poet can, T. S. Eliot offers helpful advice when considering talking about the mystery of God: “About some things we can say nothing, but before which we dare not keep silent.” Surprisingly, modern science can help us when thinking about God. Only fairly recently has science realized that the universe is over thirteen billion years old and likely will continue for some time to come. What is happening in this universe story? Theologians who ponder this reality suggest that God is behind the journey through time and is ahead of where this journey is going. The bible suggests that God is inextricably bound with the universe and its undulations, most especially with that self-conscious phenomenon in the universe known as humanity. For Christians, Jesus reveals what God is like; but even if Jesus himself is not heeded, he assures us that “the very stones will shalt” of the glory of God (Luke 19:40). In other words, Jesus proclaimed a God who is love, but the universe itself proclaims the same message. Does an artist painstakingly create a painting out of indifference or love? Christians believe that God is an artist who is love itself. That love energy at work in creation is incomprehensible because it is more than we can imagine, not less. We speak of the ineffable not because we fully understand it but because it is too wonderful to be silent about. We look to poets and mystics, saints and scholars, to help us appreciate the mystery. St. Catherine of Siena, both a mystic and a saint, described her experience of God in a simple Italian phrase: Pazzo D’Amore: God is “crazy in love with us.”